Elysium
by calligraphied
Summary: We as pariahs must learn pain, to suffer it with dignity, as it is written in our stars. Charles/OC; X-Men: First Class. HIATUS.
1. Before

_I see nothing._

_For once, in all of my life, I feel nothing. _

_Blessed numbness takes over me. I have never experienced anything so warm and soft and so like a cocoon, or if I have – I simply don't remember it after all this time. And for a moment, I feel beautiful, a caged butterfly never permitted to feel her wings, so that this apathy of nerves is the breathless pause before the unveiling. When something glorious emerges from the shell. That's what it feels like. Yes. Like the cosseting of metamorphosis. _

_Around me, movement flutters, seconds feel more like hours in length, and nothing penetrates the black veil that's seemed to fall over my eyes._

_Nothing._

_Except for a pair of celestial blue eyes._

_And I'm certain they must be the color of Heaven._

* * *

><p><em>In the void, I can still sense the things around me, but only just shapes and wraiths of contact. I feel hands – yes, there are hands, the cradled lined flesh that makes up the palm pressed against my forehead. Warmth. Vibrations beneath and above and shivering on all sides of my prone body. I'm tired. So very, very tired. Can I not sleep? Can I just move away from the world and her harsh colors for a little while, breathe in the black and gray sleep?<em>

_Stay awake, now. Steady, don't move too much. There, there, my dear, all is well. I have you now. Nothing can harm you when you're with me. I won't let them. I promise you that._

* * *

><p>I remember so little of our first meeting that they are more like dreams than memory. After all, it is the afterwards, the epilogue, where the story truly begins, and that is what matters most to the evolution of myself.<p>

Let me take you there first, so you may see what I see, understand what brought me here to the threshold of the deepest love, and so that you may take Charles Xavier for what you will. I will try not to color my tale with sentiment, nor lead you astray with my own judgments, and allow you to create your own picture of the man whom many call the greatest of our race. But as much as I am a mutant, somehow I am also human – I carry the worst of both species. But, like Charles, the beauty of both is in me as well.

Like many of our kind, I was persecuted, beaten and tortured and brutalized in ways I even now can hardly imagine, and exposed to the worst cruelty of mankind. I have come to find that it is not my place to blame them, for as much as they fear us, we, too, fear them. It is only natural to fill the void of an emotion we cannot place with hate, as it is the most inherent of our feeling, the simplest place in us that we can go to, over and over, and never feel as if we're intruding on something new and unformed and untouched. I still hate them. I can never forgive them for what they've done, for what they are doing, for what they _will _do to us. It's inevitable that they will always try to destroy us. We are the untouched place in them, the dormant part that they can never understand; nor do they want to.

But I cannot bring myself to blame them.

It is under these circumstances that I came to Charles. Alone, afraid, resigned to my solitude. I had become a wanderer, fresh out of an old life and trying to accustom myself to the new. It had been a hard transition, jarring - I was a pathetic creature when he first saw me, a lost hope, and many would have turned away and cast me out. But he had been kind to me, offered a hand when no one else even thought to spare a look in my direction. He had saved me in more ways than I could ever hope to know, as there are facets of him embedded deep in me, and I imagine they reflect the color of Heaven when the light of acknowledgment is passed over them. The same celestial blue. I will always carry those secret pieces of him with me. We always carry the leftover shards of our creator, the sweat of his brow, the callus of his hands and the labors of his love. It is only he who holds sway over what we are, what we will become, and what acts we shall commit to mark our place on the canvas of time.

I have come to base my existence on the logic that we do not choose for ourselves our fate, but rather it is shaped for us, before we can even hope to set another course amongst the stars.

It is not our place to decide what the world should hold for us, what hollow dogma we should follow, what thoughts we should think. I am fortunate that Charles had been in store for me – it was only the wait that had been truly painful. We as pariahs must learn pain; it was a necessary burden that I can now share with all of my kin.

I often find myself thankful for him, for though I was dismantled, it was Charles who built me from the inside out, and I am forever grateful to him and the gentle compassion he never failed to show me was alive and well in the world.

Charles always loved humanity.

And it is only through him that I may forgive them of the blood on their hands.

* * *

><p>Disclaimer - I don't own Charles Xavier. He belongs to Marvel. I am basing his character off the portrayal seen in <em>X-Men: First Class.<em>


	2. The First

When we are young, the world is a safe place. It can be as small as the span of our pillow lit up by moonlight or as vast as the big black space beyond the blue of our sky. I think back to that time and remember it as a gift, my ability – it was magic. With age comes clarity. And clarity brought a new gift -fear. Now, it is but a curse. And all because I was there.

What a difference circumstance makes. A day soaked in sunshine can chase the darkest of plagues away. Rain can make you want to dance and sway. Perhaps perception has a say in dictating the ways of emotions as well.

I have never known.

What do I know?

* * *

><p><em>I fold my legs into myself, curling one under the other, and the bars overhead create a mottled pattern of light doing battle with the ink-spill darkness. A rapid skittering noise interrupts the chattering silence, the one that makes your ears ring with the sound of its voice. I have learned to pay no mind to the rats. They share this place with us. <em>

_The only difference between their conditions of living and ours is the freedom they have to go where they please, to eat what they please, to bathe their fur in my water bowl and take to the pipes to freshen themselves in the light and bask in the drying heat of the sun. It has come to the point where I feel I must envy them or lose all semblance of humanity. It is the humanity in me, after all, that reasons with insanity._

_The fans switch on somewhere overhead. It reminds me of the sweat trickling and gathering into salted rivers down the square of my back. It must be mid August by now._

_In the wrought iron cage next to me, he squirms a little in his sleep, whispering the name of a woman he has never met before. Maybe once or twice, in dreams and in memory, but who doesn't long after their mother? Even if I cannot remember her, I still imagine her face, shape it together in the empty places in my head. I try to place the timber of her voice, if it as sweet as the scent of jasmine that sometimes wafts through the pipes and merges with the stench of stagnant water. _

_Sometimes, I try to think of what her skin must have smelled like, felt like (if it was soft or callused from long years of struggling against jagged hardship), but mostly it is just when I am asleep that she tucks me in and kisses me gently on the forehead, clearing the stray hairs from my brow. And when I awake, it is my own fingertips brushing the strands away, and I'm just as alone as I was when I drifted under._

_I watch him, the boy next to me, and he cries out with his bony little legs shifting wildly underneath him. Then the footsteps start to make the ground rumble. It is when I start to count in my head. I close my eyes and burn the numbers into the black canvas eyelids. One…two…three._

_The boy whimpers, louder this time. The bramble-tipped lash drags against the blood-streaked concrete._

_Four…five…six._

"_Quiet in there," comes the dangerous rasp. "I'll rip your back to shreds, boy."_

_The whip scathes the concrete, leaving white surface scars in its wake._

_Seven…eight…nine._

_He finally calls her name._

"_Mommy!" _

_And the whip comes down._

_And now he really has something to scream about._

_Ten._

* * *

><p>First, the light.<p>

Second, the warmth.

Third, the light.

It flourishes slowly. My perception has been rendered lethargic and groping by the blows and it feels like the very threads of my _skull _aches from it. All in all, routine. The flat of my palm cradles the epicenter of the pain, pinpointing its origin. A cautious hiss escapes my lungs as I sit up and for a moment I consider what good it would do to bend over and put my head between my knees, but I forget – is that not to tame a dizzy head?

The ground feels strange. Yes, not at all like it did when I last felt it. My free hand goes to tap everything around me as I attempt to unglue my lids from the other, testing every texture and its corresponding weight. When I fell, I remember the bed of ferns and thorny underbrush breaking my descent and sticking through the holes in my clothes and probing the bare skin. Sticky blood had been made black and patches of moonlight spilled over on the plant life of the forest. Everything had felt ethereal, but not comfortingly so.

My eyes peel open and _where am I? _This is hardly the forest. This is not even _outside. _Have…have I been sold? Would I not have been warned? _No. _It is but a silly dreamer's notion. None of us are forewarned of what fate may lie in wait for us beyond our rust-eaten cages. From the look of this place, it does not seem as if they know of the conditions that I had been raised into. Perhaps it will be better here.

Then again, the odds are always very often considered. When a life is reduced to that of sleep and waiting and intervals of food and water, there is too much dangerous time in between left blank.

By necessity of living, a restless mind strives to fill it, and it turns over and over on its deliberations, sifting through possibility and past, tomorrow and what is left of them, if _everything is going to be all right _will be enough anymore. Will it ever be enough. _Was _it ever enough. _I hardly know. _And that is an answer I find myself happening upon too often.

Soft, supple places in my brain left unmolded and untouched by the philosophy of others. I had been taught to speak by a well-learned master and, if I was _a good girl _I would have been educated in reading, but never had I been a _good girl. _Always a _naughty girl. _Always I had strived to reach that much envied name of _good, _though I did not know its meaning, the gravity of it.

Rapidly my mind sorts through these many recollections. But already, in the back, where there is room for more, I have begun to make preparations for an escape. Never before have I been so very close to liberation. There can be no mistake, no error in the schematics of my plot. It _must _be precise to the core.

Blindly, I take the feathery blanket off of me, lingering for but a moment to simply take note to _remember. _I had been comfortable, warm, and there had been light. _Real _light. I shall not so easily forget a morning such as this.

Inside my head, recollection grows quiet and the buzz of present activity takes its place. My bare feet plod against the wood floor. Burnished wood! How exquisite. Is that how he would have said it? I try out the word silently on my tongue, tasting it, asserting the correctness on a sentence, as he once told me to. Yes, it feels right. But its importance is little to me. I must escape. I _must._

I feel every window, every crevice in them. _All _locked tight. How does a lock work again? Oh, bother that, I will simply break it. I look around the room for an object heavy enough to inflict maximum damage. All the while, my thoughts scream at me, loud and painful as the crashing of a thunderstorm against metal shafts. _Escape, escape! You must not fail! You must escape._

Yes, I know I must. And it is with such gripping conviction that I seize a gilded thing, curling my hands around the feel of it, and position myself before a glass framed window. I take a deep breath. _Yes, that's it. There now. You're almost free. Can you smell it? Can you smell the air outside through the cracks of that window? You're almost there. _

My insides turn. Every particle of my body surfaces to my skin as if for air, as if it struggles to breathe for the first time, and the awareness of being alive floods through me, sinks into my veins as an anchor slices into the bottom of a restless sea. _Concentrate. Remember who you are, what you are capable of. You have survived much. Don't let this new Hell cage you. _

As hard as I can, I throw the heavy treasure in my hands. The crash is deafening, a rattling of glass and a tinkling of falling splinters. I cover my ears, head pounding, wounds gaping and raw to the newfound wind. The smell of a white world whispering through a blanket of snow, hoping someone will find it beneath. My fingers itch with the desire to unearth it. And I can, I realize.

Once I am outside, bare to the frozen air, the glisten of snow and ice, I can do what I wish. And all I want is to feel _dirt. _Perhaps I cannot feel the grass, but the dirt – it's still there. It sleeps.

I hardly care how long I will fall. The snow will bear the weight of my collision with hard solid ground. I take a few steps backward, gauging the distance between my body and the coming fall, and I prepare my feet. It will hurt. Skin is not made for sharp things. But pain is temporary, it will last only as long as it can against the body's defenses (I remember this from a lesson, one of so few).

Yes, freedom is longer.

It lasts.

I can bear pain for such a prospect.

I let out a cry. Like sounding war. Facing all demons and pushing through their capes of shadow and disgrace. I do not need them anymore to differentiate between dreams and waking. There is no need for Hell. I will have the whiteness to guide me. I'm free. I'm _free. _

I'm –

"No!" Someone calls out behind me, footsteps making the floors creak and shudder. "Wait! Please, you will hurt yourself!"

_No, no!_

_No you cannot have me! _

_Not when I'm so close._

Arms wrap around me. A warm and calming scent clouds my head. It stays me, roots me to this elegant prison. _Stupid, stupid, __**stupid. **_I had been so close. I am _still _so close.

Can I not fight against these flesh-bone bonds? _Yes. _

I thrash, one of my arms coming free, and I reach out to the wide open window. My entire body writhes with struggle. Someone is screaming. It makes the walls shiver. And underneath such a sound the earth quakes and my ears are pierced with it. I realize it's my own voice. But it only dawns on me when I feel my throat split and my tongue grow dry.

A voice softly penetrates the chaos of my insides. "_Hush," _he scolds me, pinning me tighter against him.

I cannot _no _I cannot go through this again and I will not and I refuse to let him win. I will not survive another master. I will not survive another night of imprisonment. Tears draw themselves out of me. My brain on fire with desperation. Please god _no. _Please. _Please. _

"I will not hurt you. Calm your mind! It is screaming…I can feel it!"

Screaming. Yes, so much of it, blinding white spots appearing before my eyes. Thrashing. Freedom so close. I can taste it. Feel it. It fingers my nerves with ice. Please let me go. Please.

The thing touches me. I recoil. Everything in me shrinks back from the touch, even my skin, as far as it can go. I am a rubber band of blood and breath. _Blood and pain and pus and black and blue and everything hurts and I belong to you and there is no me only you and I am yours._

And then, nothing. Numb. Chaos broken. Shattered. Like the glass in front of me. It winks ice back into my eyes. I stare. Who told me it was rude to stare? But does it apply to nature? Does it apply when you cannot move your own limbs?

"I am here to help you," it says, and somewhere, inside of me where he has not touched, I can feel the sweat and the screams and the pleas begin to twist together in a knowing sick knot. "I know it will be hard for you to learn trust, but I am aware of the patience it will require. You have been hurt. You have seen much. But you will suffer them no longer. I will keep you safe. I need only for you to offer me a chance to do what I can to help you."

He pulls me into his arms and I retreat inward, safety, rock harbor standing straight and tall and true against the encroaching black squall.

I try to remember her voice. My mother's voice. He is not here. I am not here.

I am in her arms. Whoever, wherever, _whenever_ she may be.

* * *

><p>I can hear them whispering in the kitchen.<p>

_Charles, who is she?_

_I hardly know. _

_You don't know?_

_She will not tell me._

_Did you think to ask?_

_I do not wish to frighten her with questions. We will learn soon enough._

_Oh, well __**that's **__comforting._

_Raven, please._

_Don't, Charles. I know you. You have a bad habit of taking in 'pets'. _

_I do not believe this is the time to discuss such things._

_Oh, right, I forgot. You have a new favorite._

_Stop it._

_No, you put her back where you found her. We don't know what she's capable of. I'm not leaving you here for eight hours out of a day with a strange girl who likes to break windows wandering free about the house._

_I believe she may be one of us._

_But where did she come from?_

_As I have said, I do not know. I found her in the forest – bruised, bloody, scarred. I do not know who or what has done such things to her, but I know she has suffered much._

_What do you plan on doing with her?_

Through the crack in the door, the door he had meant to shut behind him, our eyes meet. His are blue. A warm blue and they are soft and wide and inviting.

It is but an instant.

_I must help her._

I am not allowed to look my master in the eye.

_She needs time._

* * *

><p>I pride myself upon knowing how to manage time. Especially when it drags ever onward slowly and when little occurs in between its passing. He has not spoken. I must not speak unless I am asked to. Even then, I do not think I will be able to form words. My throat is cracked and dry. Where has my tongue gone? Where I cannot. I wish I could follow it. Recede into unknown. Would it be dark there? Would it know concrete differences between night and day?<p>

I stare down at my fingers, willing them silently to awake, but in their core they are apathetic to sensation. Outside, the shell trembles, tingles. It has been a very long time since I was so terrified.

His patience, I think, is what terrifies me. He is willing to simply sit there, a cup of tea in front of him, not moving, not looking, hardly breathing I think and blinking very rarely in between the thinly spread out seconds.

Two sugar cubes, one teaspoon of milk, stirring with a thoughtful air about him. I remember because he'd stared down into the rim of the cup, as if the coiling liquid inside held great importance, perhaps a reflection of something he has long since forgotten.

As fearful as I am of this new captor, he is a strange creature. He is quiet. Introspective. His eyes betray the inherent coldness of their color. Warmth surrounds his person. I am afraid of his guise. When will the ruse fall?

I can take beatings.

I can suffer harsh words.

But this…

This is new torture.

I am not prepared for its effects.

He notices my shivering. He has only just sat down, after all. I have been here quite a time, my muscles tight from little movement and too much lethal fear in them. Adrenaline rushes toward nothing.

"Are you cold?"

Count. Count to ten. It will be over soon.

_One…two…three._

Yes, here it comes. He is getting up. His footsteps are a countdown. If I count with them, it will pass quicker. It will hurt less if the concentration goes elsewhere. Yes, just count. Numbers are a comfort. The mind is a haven.

_Four…five…six._

He reaches for something behind me.

Outside of my mind, the world may fall out from underneath my feet.

_Seven…eight…nine._

And I will not feel it.

I am safe in my head.

_Ten._

I squeeze my eyes shut.

His hands and a heavy cloth close over my shoulders. He swathes it around me.

I am not prepared for such a soft, yielding feeling and I shrink away, my entire body retreating into itself, into the firm husk of bone.

"There, now," he says. He releases me and some of me emerges from its cave and into the warm kitchen light.

And I wonder.

If there are such things as angels.

Or if they are merely dreams.

Dreams woven out of desperate sorrow.

"I will not hurt you," he repeats, over and over, - is it merely insecure mantra?

Yes, they must be dreams.

In my peripheral vision, his hands crumple into a poised fold, and I feel him looking at me. Disappear. Let me disappear. Let me be invisible to all eyes but that of God.

"When you are ready, I will listen. I wish to know where it is that you came from. But only if and when you are ready. I can wait as long as you require me to do so. Whenever you wish, I will be there to listen, and you needn't ask permission to speak."

His hands fold before him. Patient. _Waiting. _

_But at the very least they are beautiful lies._

* * *

><p><em>Disclaimer - I don't own Charles Xavier. He belongs to Marvel. I am basing his character off the portrayal seen in <em>X-Men: First Class.<em>  
><em>


	3. A Darkness and Red

I sit. No, maybe it is more like waiting. Or dangling. The bed is a safe raft in a rickety sea and I am clinging to it. My head is cradled by my sweat-slick hands.

I do not see anything that the colors blackest black cannot render – visions dredged up from a disquiet memory. I see red, yes, so much sick scarlet. There is much red to be found, doused a little by the blackest black.

And then there are shapes moving in the red. Milk eyes. Opaque and staring and unseeing. There is no pupil, nor is there iris, no interruption from the whites of them. And they seem to smile saccharine sweet with every stroke of pain they cannot see, but the ears attached nearby may hear. Perhaps it is not sweet, but sour, bitter to the tongue and the senses, and he is a great pretender.

I recognize my own voice amongst the waves. It is paper thin with screaming. Where am I? Why am I so far away that I cannot reach myself? Am I truly lost amongst the tempest? Only the milk-eyed man may know. I do not wish to ask him. He is the fear in me. He inspired the tyrannical reign of fear over my sovereign serene soul. Please go. Go from me and never return and I shall never dream red again if only you would go and I would stay and there would be no more room for negotiation beyond a parting of ways in between a pendulum sea.

* * *

><p>"<em>Come now, I want to teach you to sing."<em>

_Hot breath. Acrid and sulfur. Brimstone hot hands around my throat. White skin dying, blood vessels popping open, everything purple and black and blue. Clawing. No nails, just helpless scratching at fingers that are not mine and not supposed to be there at the base of my throat squeezing the breath back down into the depths of me. Choking me from the inside out. _

_I'm sorry please I will never I swear never talk back again can you not hear me I am shouting I am crying out should I scream would you even know I am screaming?_

_Apology lost somewhere on the road to being spoken aloud. He will not let it through. Blockade. I wish the air could somehow seep in between the reddish-black cracks in between but his grip is too tight._

"_Use that diaphragm. Build it up. Go on, that's a girl. Suck it in real tight."_

_Claws grow useless. They know it and I know it too. I'm going to die but it's a comfort to know this. Eyelids soften to skin and mush. Lips turned blue and slack. The room begins to close in, oblivion taking everything I've ever known. Leaky pipes gone. Skittering rats abducted by darkness. Orange-gold lights disappear. All that is left is the milky-eyed man. He is tall. He is human. How can I not overpower a human? I am supposed to be the stronger one. The usurper of strength. The supreme being. _

_Help me, strength. Come to me authority. Help me._

_Overthrow him._

_He frees me. _

_But not before the darkness takes him too._

* * *

><p>Hanging onto that raft helps me none. I must move, shake the anxiousness out of me before it tears open something important inside. Moving yes. Motions help dilute the thick bruise remembering. It is almost like suffocation again. No breath getting through eyes dilating and walls spinning fast and faster until there is no ground just a dizzy place that I cannot follow quickly enough.<p>

_Move, go, just make your feet make steps and forward you will go._

It is a small living space, but much larger than that of which I am accustomed to, and so it feels as if I am a dwarf stealing into a giant's lair. I am the smallest of thieves. Thief, is that the word I wish to press upon my self? No. My legs bend and unbend. My feet make wet slapping noises against the hard floor because they are so drenched in sweat. I tug at my bruising lip. I yank on it. As if that will hurry the musing onward.

There are pictures on the walls. Paintings, I believe. Of shorelines with summer dabbed upon them in strokes of gold and yellow and undertones of white. Blue and tan make up the sand meeting sweeping shore. The wallpaper is floral, I think. I have never seen such wallpaper before. Master had plain wallpaper the color of blood exposed to air. This one is tender almost. As if well meaning in its attempt to calm and pacify.

There are only two lamps – one nearest the bed, on the end table (_end table…is that what it is called, yes?). _ The other is nearest the bookcase and the inviting pale blue armchair. I remember. All I seem to do lately is rely on remembering. It is all I have now, I suppose.

There was a tall-backed armchair in my past and it did not look inviting, no not really, not at all like this one. It was foreboding and looked cold as that feeling you get when you touch raw ice. It had been shiny and reflective in texture and black. _Leather? _Is that what it had been?

Nothing escapes nervous scrutiny. I even heed the small picture propped up on the third shelf of the six shelved bookcase. It is wreathed in a shimmering gold frame. The face of a man gone thistle-gray with age smiles back at me. I smile back a little, but I am afraid of it faltering to a grimace. I turn away from that kind and thoughtful face. The eyes are too blue. Too much like angel's woven blue. I thought I had decided angels did not exist but perhaps, yes maybe so – they do.

A knock sounds at the door. The gasp bubbles up in me before I can purge it back into safe keeping. Hastily, too hastily, I go into the shadows, where it is nice and safe and blessedly dark and the voice asks very considerate in a way _might I come in? _

I make no sound. No, no sounds allowed. He comes in anyway despite the lack of invitation. Master would have throttled him, had the milk-eyed man give him a good lashing for his insolence. But it seems that everything this man does, even the most insolent of actions, are done in great kindness and gentle intent.

He walks in, the moonlight spilling down his face and into his faded forest green night robe. There is a moment where the silver just catches on the snagging blue of his eyes and renders me blind from their wide open color. It is a moment before I may recover, a terrifying split second, and I coil up inside to keep myself safe should it come to that.

My stomach ties itself into knots. My gut aches with poison dread. He looks about the room, eyes dulled by no light, but I can still see their roving from my haven behind the rigidly tall wardrobe. He cannot find me here. My sentinel will guard me. He will save me. Yes, I have utter faith in his ability.

"I heard you cry out," he confirms this to the lonely space around him. "I thought perhaps it would be best to make certain you are all right."

_Do not reply. _

_You are a fool if you utter _

_One word _

_In reply._

The floors creak and groan and stretch beneath his weight. He is a small statured man, though he towers over my slinking height. He ambles over to the window, which has been replaced in the last two days since I have been here. The glass no longer litters the floor, though now it is pitted with scars from the fall.

Pangs of remembering how close I had been to freedom. I could smell her hair, the sweet ghost scent of jasmine on an unfelt and untouched and unseen spring air of long ago. _Do not mourn a premature loss. It will soon come again…the opportunity for escape._

He stands before the window. Again he is made alive by the touch of a winter's moon. Pallor grips him tight to her white chest. The only colors of him are the lingering blue of the eyes and the faded robe draped over his slight form. Behind him, his hands find one another, clasping in a thoughtful fashion. His teeth drag over his lips. Yes, deep gray thought has him in their clutches.

"You know, once -" he laughs a little, amused by emotions the past may render. "Once, when I was a boy, I woke from a most distressing dream. Father was gone, on business you know, and mother was as ever cold and distant in her ways. I have not – that is to say, I am well aware of the potency of dreams. How they can turn on you in but a moment."

Surely our dreams cannot be of the same fabric. Difference must take them to separate worlds. Surely they cannot collide. Where mine are the color of red and black his must be of blue and threadbare green.

What do I know of his mind, what monsters roam the black secrets of it? I know only of my own nocturnal torments. I have never been the confidant of another's. It is strange. Very, yes – very much so. To hear that another being suffers the same demons in the night.

And then, that is when, and it is a when that will forever burn my remembering with the lack of terror that I feel, but only faint discomfiture in the stead of stark blinding fear. Still the reflex carries out the mechanics of its purpose. To salvage what has long since been lost I think. He has looked over at me. A simple motion.

But it is not only that. It is not that he looked _at _me but that he looked _in _me. Peered in at the lurching twisting interior and did not withdraw from the repulsion of seeing such empty damage taking place there. He simply peeked in and leaned back from the precipice after a good long study. He is not afraid of me. Not as I am of him. Not as I am of the milk-eyed puppet and his cruel puppeteer.

"You fear me. I can see it in your mind," he says to me, and he nods, affirming his own observations. "Words are but cheap mimics of actions and so I shall prove to you that my intention is not to harm you. Here, you are safe. Here, you need not retreat into the refuge of your head. I wish only to know you."

In my head, there is peace. A place where serenity and sunshine meet and are not afraid. Grass. I can feel it growing under my wiggling toes. It is all imagined. The heat is not there, not like my master has spoken of when he mentions the sun. I have only seen pictures of grass.

What does it feel like I wonder. It must be like velvet. Not crushed but pure and untarnished by humans. Green lush velvet that is born out of the earth's womb. I try not to watch the blue coming toward me. The body that follows it. Green grass and yellow sun and colorless serenity that I can make any shade I wish.

In here I am nowhere near tidal wave fear.

Only lapping softly waves that tickle me and wish to play.

He is here. Before me. There is space enough between us but I want more. More distance, less proximity, and maybe my stomach would not jump up into my ribs so painfully. Look down. Shoulders down. Head down. Hair hides me. A coiled curtained thing.

_Look at me, my dear._

It is in my head. My safe place. No. No please you cannot have the only refuge I have. Please let me have it back. I want to cry. I want to rip the tears out of my stubborn head and let them fall and make him see what he has done. Dare I look at him?

_Yes. You dare. _

Everything is sharper somehow, clearer, as if my eyes are wider. The blue of his are still warm no cold to be found there.

_Yes, it is my voice you are hearing. Fret not…I will utilize my ability only when it is required or asked of me. I will not invade what little privacy you may have to your name. As it is late, I shall leave you now – I only came as I heard you cry out. Sleep as well as you can manage, my friend. _

He outstretches his hands, palms up and open wide, as if he is to offer something, but I see nothing. Curiously I look at him, questioning, wondering without words. His smile is a string of silent laughter threading through the taut veins.

_Go on, take it. Your haven. It is yours. I will not come back to it unless you seek me and ask it of me._

I reclaim it, but I do not touch the hands. They drop and something wilting fills in the empty space his mirth has left behind it. He turns, expression dotted out by gloom, and I feel safe again. Tears are unnecessary now. They are only a tool.

At the door, he seems to flinch. He glances back at me. I can see it out of the sides of my vision.

_Oh, and once I leave, you may find that I have left a small peace offering on the end table closest to the door._

With a long finger he taps the wall next to the bleary crack of the door and leaves. The way out and in is all but shut behind him. I look, parasitic curiosity latching onto all resolve in me. There, just where he dictated, is a mug. It seems like the type he used for tea the other night, the first night, and I cannot help but wonder despite the rippling unrest in me.

Caution. Yes, caution is needed here. With every carefulness taken into consideration, I pick my way across the room and stop before I reach the door and its nearby end table completely. There. It is there. Something white and frothing gurgles within the cup, like something alive and moving, but I realize it is heat which makes it move. Not sun heat but man-made heat.

Reflexively, I reach out my hand and let it hover over the fogged up rim. The invisible whorls wrap around my hand and hug it tight to the steamy little bodies.

_Hot breath. Milk white eyes. Make you sing. Yes, make you sing. I will._

My insides tilt and off kilter I go and I am falling and nothing will catch me not even ground or air or body and that feeling of letting go without knowing what I am descending into seizes my stomach and squeezes the bile out of it like a sour soupy sponge. I land on the floor. Throat burning. Stomach dancing on stilts it feels like. _Stilts. Tall. Milk eyes. _I am sick all over the hard wood and I can almost hear myself screaming again.

Oh. _Oh –_

When I come back, phase into my own body again and stop plummeting down from old stale dreams, I am swimming in my own body's refuse. The stench is tart, but not the kind that I am supposed to like but rather to find unseemly. Repulsion, I think is the term. Yes, that must be what makes me shrink away from the dripping sick.

It has caught in my hair. Wet spidery insides clinging to safe warm tendrils. I wipe it, as hard as I can, as if the smell will catch on my hands and onto the floor. And oh god the floor I remember and it is with a terrible spasm of horror that I realize what I have done and oh god what will they do when they see what I have done will the ruse finally fall will the warm blue turn to frost and ice and the gentleness return to malice and what will I do when they find what I have done _God will you find me here before they do?_

I am in a panic. Memory is forgotten. Dreams plunge back into deep black sleepy mind. Looking around, I am frantic to find it. Something. _Anything. _I need to hide the evidence of my crime. My eyes lock on the sheet. _Yes. _That will have to do. But where to put it where I cannot be blamed for its soiling?

Later. That is another matter. I tear it off the mattress and throw it over the pile of my terror turned to watery sick. It soaks through, the slickness taking to the fabric, and I mop up the rest with as much quickness as my lethargic limbs may allow. All done. All is safe. I hope. I can only hope.

I throw it outside and return to my bed. There, I curl into myself, praying into my belly for forgiveness. Please. Let me be safe. Keep the white eyes out of my head. I will do anything.

_Please._

The sun comes up from her white sullen grave behind the mountain peaks and she disappears so suddenly behind a filmy gray sky.

* * *

><p>The only thing that may calm me as of late is to pace. Three days now have passed and this is the only remedy I have for the fraying, the wearing down of spring-tight nerves. My feet are so fast they are but a pale blur. Beneath my eyes they travel faster than my own consciousness can fathom. No thinking. There is no room for thinking when I am moving so rapidly. Sweet singing silence. I reach for tranquility. If it is there when I arrive at its threshold I will take it.<p>

Only if it will let me.

The door opens. Eyes drop. Feet still, legs with them. Hands pounce to sides. Body like a livewire, stinging. I can see the spot where the puddle of my own vomit had been the night before. _White eyes. _No. Go. Go from me and do not come back.

_Please do not find it. I promise_

_I will never do it again._

Two figures. One female, the other familiar. She is beautiful. The sockets that hold her gaze are soft and milky almost in a pleasant way. Lips shine under the natural light. A dip in her cheek when she smiles at me. Why is she smiling? Is it…have they discovered my crime?

I count to ten. Numbers. Comfort. Counting.

I am on five when she starts to speak.

"I ah," the girl starts, and she takes a few steps forward, leveling her voice, "I brought some new clothes for you. Those look like they've pretty much been worn to death. Here."

She tries to take my hand.

_1….2…3…4…5678910._

I wrench backward, nearly collapsing from the too-quick yanking back, and she starts at my abruptness. Retreat. This time it is a lighthouse. Slabs of red brick worn away by light and salt sea. Gulls cry. Sun and no clouds to bind her. The sky is the color of his eyes. The vision breaks. She is staring. I look down, dizzy, trying not to lose my stomach to the floor again not in front of them please no _12345678910._

"No, no," she murmurs, afraid of her own voice it seems I can hear it in the trembling timber of it. "It's okay. I won't hurt you. See? Just clothes…and a towel. I thought you um…you know…might wanna get cleaned up a little before you change. I'll show you to the bathroom. Is…is that okay?"

I look at her hands and realize there are bundles of cloth in them. The colors are muted, but the scent is fresh and what clean must smell like if it had a scent to its name.

Is…is it _okay? _She seeks my approval? I level my gaze with hers and see something in them that I do not recognize. After a short deliberation, in which I find no danger in doing, I nod. My lip nearly cracks beneath the pressure of my teeth closing down on it.

Her tone changes, but this time she is talking to the man, the blue, the warm color. "Charles, beat it. This is a girls only zone."

"I have complete and utter faith in you, dear one." He smiles at her, bows a little, and departs.

Once we are alone and the man is gone from our presence and everything that was once three only a moment ago is now two she holds out her hand. It is thin and delicate and elegant in ways that I have never seen before on a being, especially on one so beautiful. My nail latches onto the bruised lip. It must be a trap. It _must _be. Why else would she offer something such as her hand so that she may capture me and not let go and I will not be able to overpower her in my weak state no do not take it I must not.

"Go on," she utters gently. "Take it. It won't bite, I promise."

I feel as if there is an order in there somewhere. Even though I am afraid, I cannot disobey an order. My heart thuds, slips and tries to beat evenly again but to no avail. Lungs fight for breath. I am done for. I have been found out. Three days hiding in a generosity mask is too long a wait for restless gnashing monsters to suffer. Here it comes. My entire body tightens for the coming pain. At least I have numbers. At least there are pictures I can escape into in my head.

_I am sorry._

The appendage. It is…I can hardly describe it. Melting earth perhaps. The touch of the sun's warmth must be like this, I can only imagine. I find myself melting into the soft heat. Even if it is the last of the kindness I will relish it and I have never felt such a warm and gentle thing before.

Except

Perhaps

In his eyes

Yes those eyes that scrape the bottom of Heaven

And have found a way into their light and stolen some of it and the color and the beauty is his for keeping.

Her voice takes me out of my thoughts. "Come on then. Let's scrape some of that dirt off you, huh?"

She leads me out of the room, the safest place in the whole of the building, and a little way down the very long and gaping hall there are a myriad of doors. All of them are a muted brown color and wood. Apparently they are all portals to very different places than the one I have just come out of. She picks one of them, closest to the banister that leads downstairs, and walks inside, my wound up body shuffling so reluctantly in behind her.

I look around at my new habitat. It is a temporary one I am sure. While she plays with the tap in a strange hollowed out object and lets water flow out of the faucet I try to distract myself from my own terrible damning considerations. Torture by water. Perhaps she shall drown me and be merciful and it will be an honor killing to dispose of the rodent that lives in the room at the end of the hall.

"Do you like a warm bath?" She asks.

I do not answer I cannot and I hardly know how she can expect me to speak in the presence of my own condemnation in a place filled with mirrors that will record the pain I will feel in only moments and _god _have I ever been so scared before surely I have.

She seems to answer her own question, turning a squeaky knob a few times. I am glad of it. I would not have been able to reply if she had truly wanted me to.

Without knowing it, I have backed myself into the furthest corner away, and when she stands she chuckles a little. It flutters in my head like a black butterfly and its sharp wings pierce my senses and it sends a shiver of cruel anticipation and dread down the hollow places in my back. I swallow against the glass lodged in my throat. It feels like I have swallowed one of the staring mirrors.

"Obviously you can't get clean all the way over there," she scolds. I step out of the corner a little. "Come on I told you I don't bite. I only nibble on Charles and between you and me it's because he likes it."

It is a strange method of torture and I will allow her only that.

And then, after she has smiled upon me again for what feels as it will be the last time anyone will ever smile at me she turns toward the door. My heart lifts a little out of the quagmire. Where is she going? Perhaps to retrieve her tools.

She directs me to the bath, telling me not to forget to remove my clothes, and scrub all the way down to my toes.

I do as I am told and I wait a very long time in the soothing roiling heat and the water and I am relaxed in waiting for the pain for the first time in my life.

* * *

><p><em>Eyes.<em>

_They are the cover of heaven._

_Celestial blue._

_Sunlight upon them._

_And they are warm._

_Though the color brings to me the thought of cold and ice and winter._

_And perhaps this is the most beautiful torture I have ever felt in my life._

* * *

><p><em><em>Disclaimer - I don't own Charles Xavier. He belongs to Marvel. I am basing his character off the portrayal seen in <em>X-Men: First Class.<em>_  
><em>


	4. The Danger of Remembering

Stirring. In my ears and rustling behind my eyes. I shoot up straight. Vision sleep-blurred. Hearing everything outside and within the floral-print walls. Spools of starlight and moonlight merging creep through the gauzy drapes. I think I see a figure by the door. But maybe it is only leftover dreaming. I listen hard, so hard my head begins to throb with my fast beating heart.

Nothing. There is nothing there.

My palm goes to my temple, trying to still the raucousness of the quietude in here. I had been so sure. Yes, the image of a black hand. Long fingers. Pale as the snow outside. Cold creeps in and up my back. Perhaps it is only my own cold fear I suffer.

Another nightmare has come and gone. Ebbing and flowing. Like a tide, it swells so quickly I think I cannot escape it and then, so suddenly, it dies and falls back. Sweat drenches the pajamasI am wearing. They are cotton and striped navy blue and black a little long in the legs. The top of it consumes my abdomen conceals me in its cloth mouth from existence and it helps to dry my sticky-damp skin. I feel safe in them somehow. Another layer of skin to hide under. I could be a turtle for a moment and hide behind them and would they know? Silly, yes too silly.

I climb out of bed. Like a diver would climb out of the depths of a hugging ocean. Or a root would dig its way out of a fresh bed earth. _Hot hands. Wide teeth smile. Bruises. Cannot see his eyes. Fingernails lodged into frail skin arms. Tall-backed chair. _No no _no. _

My brain nearly breaks in two. Too heavy with yesterdays gore. Master had been smiling at me in the dream. The milk-eyed man was there too. He was the administrator. The tormentor. I had misbehaved again. I had said the wrong word. I hate to say the wrong word but I had always wandered after the right ones – though I did not know their path, their ways, the consistency of them on my tongue. I wonder what they would have tasted like; the right words. The correct way to speak. Not of blood.

Over by the door. The end table. Yes, that had been where the make believe hand had been. It had stolen into the chink in between the door frame and the brassy unused locks.

Maybe if I locked the dreams out. Would that work? How do you pin down a specter of the past? If only I could ask the warm blue eyed man. If only he had a name that I could call. Or if I knew it well, kept it on the banks where no forgetting may ever come and take it away.

On the end table, there is a stack of books. My heart feels on fire. Lungs are pumping ashes. _Books. _Only master had been _good _enough for books. Even the milk-eyed man could not read. He had been a tool. I had been a tool. Tools cannot read books. They are not allowed. I had often seen them, stared without seeing at their spiny spindling letters. Some had gold others bold black and some were silver.

I cannot read. I had never been taught in the art of it. But I can still touch and smell and breathe in the scent of new and old and middle-aged pages.

I look to the door, a book in my hand –_ Alice in Wonderland – _and the black arm had been in here. A smile and a caressed title page smelling of new ink and fresh print and no age anywhere to be found.

_Thank you _I say for I have no need of talking to ghosts and nightmares now.

* * *

><p>The woods outside crackle with thick new snow. Sometimes a deep and low thud will resound throughout the scattered trees and I know a lump of burdensome snow has fallen off a weak branch.<p>

The house is bleary-eyed and accustomed to dim starlight to see. I think no one must be awake but me. Not a footstep has passed my door in the hours I have spent perusing the great and beautiful treasure boxes full of words.

It has been morning a while now. It has been since I woke in the midst of the frostbitten dark. The lamp is on too. I have forgotten to turn it off since the sun rose and everything turned glassy and radiant and alive. She is high now. The sun. She spreads out her golden fingers on the pages. Maybe she wants to read too. If only I could read to her. Would she not read to me if I could hear her voice?

Her sheaths of light spread to the edge of the door. I can see it is still early. Very early. Not quite withering down from dawn. Still too young to be near noon.

At the door, a knock strikes. Once. Twice. Thrice. The book slams shut, by itself it seems. It knows I have been caught. It is a kind old thing and does not want them to catch me. What if they had been put there to tempt me? Test the level of my weakness? I would not pass such a test. Certainly they would have mercy knowing how pitiful I truly am.

I rip open the drawer in the end table. The book goes in there for now. They may take away the others but they cannot take that one from me. It is mine. _All _mine. I will hoard it away and keep it far from their reach. One last time the gold letters flash at me. _Goodbye _they say. _Alice in Wonderland. _I take them and slip them into a drawer in my head. There. All mine. I have staked my claim.

"Miss, are you not awake yet?" A pause. One that would occur in between words and checking a watch. "It is nearly nine o' clock! Come now, miss! Time for breakfast. Master would wish you to come and join him if it is good with you. He says only to knock on your door and give you a little jolt out of bed and wait and see if you answer. If not, then my task here is done."

He waits. And waits. And waits some more. I know it is a _he _as the voice that soaks through the door is low and rasping and deep in timber. Not at all like the girl's voice. The pretty girl with that speaks as though she is always laughing. Or close to the brink of it. Hers is higher and softer and lovely.

He is done waiting. "And my task here is done. The master waits on you. There is tea. Good day to you, miss."

Now he is gone. I am certain. I cannot hear is breath hitting the door and fanning out in all different directions out in the hall. His footsteps, too. They faded fast. And then the creaks and groans and squealing of aging wood and he is picking his way carefully down the staircase.

Once he has reached the bottom I peel the covers off me. There is a robe hanging on the back of the closet door, on a simple gold colored hook. There are clothes lying in wait behind the door but I do not wish to soil them with my inferiority. Perhaps I will never wear them. I do not mean to stay here at all. I am beginning to find that I do not belong to him - no, _not really no_. He does so little with me. It is as if I am no one to him but an occupied room. Not a servant, not a tool. Nothing. What he has in store for me I do not know. But I am afraid, still, to discover his intentions.

Never mind that. I _am _hungry and my stomach painfully reminds me of this with its gurgling and sharp little pangs. My arms slip through the cotton robe. A lovely smell wafts up to greet me in layered tendrils. There it is. _Clean. _And it has become my favorite for it has many full-bodied faces.

Slow. Slow and steady. Like the tortoise not the hare. He is too hasty. It is being like the hare that has earned me so very many scars that I do not like and that I wish away whenever I get around to remembering they are there. I detest the hare. It is his philosophy and following it that made those scars and let them take residence on my flesh. The tortoise. Yes, he is a turtle, a slow and creeping creature that takes his time and thinks his way through the lingering nature of his life.

I consider each step down the flight of stairs that I take. I clutch the banister, sleek and polished wood sliding under my palm. Many seconds have gone from me when I arrive at the bottom. But I was slow. I was slow and steady and _good. _My heart thrills at that. I was _good. _I did not need think of being thoughtful of my steps because I had done it naturally. That makes me _good. _The feeling is what flying might be like if I had wings and spread them out and drifted on the currents of wind.

In truth, since I have been here I have seen little of my new master's dwelling place. What I have seen of it is staggering. Tall ceilings. Some glass and the endless stretching sky peeks through them. The one in the kitchen is mute and nondescript. White and grain. I have kept my eyes on the blinking twinkles of blue that cast themselves over me. I realize this is reflection. The light bouncing off the glass.

Now I am at the end of the long and broad corridor. Under the frame of another entryway _there _yes I see him now it is an unfamiliar face. He has his hands knotted in one tangled appendage. They hang limply over his middle. A pressed black suit with a bow tie and hair gleaming and brushed back. He is nearly as polished as this house. I stop dead still. A few feet away he is in the same motionlessness.

"Ah miss you came."

The man from behind the door then. Yes that is him. I recognize the voice made of gravel.

"Master Xavier waits in the breakfast nook for you. You will like it. It is a very sunny open place. Lots of windows since it seems you like them so much."

He gestures for me to follow him with one of his untied hands (I never even saw them come undone). I follow. As I am told. I try to mimic his long and sweeping footfalls but my legs are too ungainly and short. I settle for my own pace. It is good enough to get me where I need to be.

The breakfast nook is as beautiful as he says. A room made entirely out of framework and windows and the ceiling is painted to match a sky brushed with cotton white clouds. I stare up at it as I walk inside, the gravel voiced man shutting the door behind me. I glance over at them just as the knob flicks upward and the way out is closed.

Near one of the windows, my new master sits, one leg propped over the other. His back is a leaning angle. He looks like what comfort would be if it tried to become human – or at least its likeness. There's a bird flitting its wings outside the window. He watches it glide off and out of his sight. Then, he rises. Leg back to its original place. Back straightening. Eyes – those eyes. They fall on me.

I twist up inside. Like hands plaiting new rope. Hands at sides. Eyes down. Hair slides down narrow shoulders. Numbers. Yes numbers burn green and bright like grass. I wish he did not unnerve me so. I wish I did not have nerves for him to dismantle with ease.

"You came," he tells me, confirms to himself. It is like a whisper.

_12345678910…12345678910…one two three. _

"I have tea for you." He rounds the length of the small plain wooden table. It is round and so his movements make a circular sort of shape. He pulls out a chair for me. Pats it once, like for luck. "Will you not sit with me and talk? Remember it is only if you wish to. I like to think I am a patient man. Come, sit."

I stop counting. Numbers released back into their secure little coves. Feet out. Left first. Right follows. Legs carry my body that feels like lead. If only it was lighter. Something thin and see through. Then I could disappear. I would so love to disappear.

He sits down across from my chair and resumes his old position. Leg over the other. Back slumped comfortably. But still there is an air about him. _What is that word? Aris- what? Aristo…arista…aristocrat. Yes! That there. That is it. Aristocrat. All masters are aristocrats. They must be because the old master had the same air._

It helps my fear of him little. Perhaps not at all.

He folds his hands together. They are like pale creamy links. They fit into the slots in between their opposite counterparts and give him a determined look. "You slept well?"

I nod quickly. _Liar. _

He throws back his head. A hearty laugh makes his throat shake. I cannot help but watch the mesmerizing white length of it bob up and down. His head falls back into place. Still the tendons tremble. But his eyes. They are very awake. Perhaps the angels are watching me through those tunnels of blue – tunnels of heaven looking down on me.

What do they see _I wonder._

"You are not a very skilled liar," he says.

_Oh._

"But," he goes on, holding up one finger. His other hand is busy reaching for the plain china white tea pot steaming and steeping. "I understand your plight. I have found that, for myself, often the best means of distraction are the simplest ones. I left books on your end table in the midst of the night. I do hope you saw them."

I nod again.

"Good!" He says and his face is like cream silk stained with blush and bent to fit that of a human smile. "Perhaps it will do some good for you as it has done me. _Now. _Before we commence – here you are a little tea to calm you – I believe I should confess to you a little sin of mine. I only hope you may forgive me."

Forgive him? _Forgive him? _He is the strangest master I have ever heard of. I am no one to forgive anyone of anything. No authority. Nothing. I _am _nothing. A tool. A string of permanent ink numbers on the underside of an arm that no one cares to grip unless in anger or malicious intent. Who am I to forgive him? Much less sin. I am walking bloated sin. I reek of it. The stench of red guilt is on me. I bow my head a little under the weight of conviction. _His. _I need no more burden of anyone's sin but my own. I have my own weight to bear.

"You see," he says, fingers unfolding, taking on a new form. They are now pressed against each other. Like a teepee. I can almost imagine smoke coming out of the top of them. "I have decided on a name for you since I know you do not have one. There it is said. You may forgive me if you wish. I know I said I would never traipse your past unless it was asked of me but it could not be helped. I apologize, but my curiosity could not stand its own ignorance. But! In my defense, I have only looked for a name. No memories, no other details. Simply a name. And I could not find one! It is not that I missed it but that it is not there. Never spoken, never given! It is only that all of us have names. It offers identity, I believe. And you – I have unearthed the perfect name for you. Would you care to know it?"

For a moment, a beautiful and blessed lapse in time, I look on him. Straight. No lowering of gazes and we are equal beings if just for a few seconds. I nod and this time I can see the spectrum of sunlight and natural light falling on his eyes. _Celestial blue. _

"One of my favorite women in literature - Luciana. Gentle, quiet, modest, and loyal as all get out! Perhaps it is chauvinistic of me, to take to adoration of a subservient woman, but I always found her loyalty and tenderness refreshing. Raven detests that I love her so, as she loves Adriana you see, but I cannot help what I love."

"_Luciana." _I have to strain my vocal chords to get it out. It is raspy and strangled sounding on my voice but nonetheless it is beautiful and my heart swells with pride. I have a _name. _I am no longer a number but a _name. _And a beautiful one. Yes. _Yes _I can think of no name more lovely.

"So you do have a voice! My, that is quite a proverbial monkey you have taken off my back," he laughs and leans forward a little, leg still crossed. "You have a very beautiful voice, Luciana. It would be such a tragedy to let it waste away in silence."

My own fingers tie and untie an invisible tether in my lap. They bury themselves. Disappear. I cannot see them through the creases in my robe.

"Do you wish to tell me at last, Luciana?" The way he says _my name _is like the way God might speak to a praying and dying man – a resurrecting murmur. "You needn't hide in yourself any longer. I will listen. But only if you are ready. I would not dream of pushing you when you are not ready. Are you?"

This is it then. No backwards. Only forwards. I have resisted too long. He must be growing impatient. Yes I must tell. But how? Simply thinking of speaking of it makes my throat go terribly dry. I cannot. _No you cannot. _I am afraid. I am a coward and I am afraid. What a waste of a beautiful name I truly am. I bow my head. Tears come. No, _no, _go back to your stations. There is no need of them.

He is so hushed it almost feels as if he is not there. I do not want him to see the betrayal of tears. One of them finally falls. It grazes my cheek. Burning. Salt burning. White hot and they leave a small red trail behind. I hear him get up. No! Do not come any closer!

I push the chair back too sudden and it nearly falls and I almost fall and _god _I cannot do this he said I did not have to but I am a coward and I do not like being a coward. I feel something on my hand. It grabs me. I gasp and try to retrieve it from the thing but I find it is another hand that has it in its clutches. I look up. Warmth. Blue.

"I-I do not…" I try to look at him but I cannot and I falter and look down at his shoes. I realize I am not _good _enough to look at his shoes and so I look at my bare feet instead. "_Speak of it. _No. Painful."

"All is well," he utters in softness. Squeeze. My _hand. _Such gentleness I have never known. How can he be my master when I have seen no cruelty from him? "You needn't speak of it if you feel you cannot."

"I want to tell you," I say. "I think…I think I want to. I don't know." I shake my head. Faster. Dizzy. "I don't know…"

His fingers trace my temple. Calm. I am serenity. My breath is the wind tapping the white-capped swells. Eyes half-mast. I can still see him. He is there. "May I?"

"Yes," I say, and I am gone and so is he and we are lost together.

Pain. Oh _god _it is everywhere. Bruising form and bleeding form and burning form and splitting open of skin and flaying and beating and _please stop it hurts I will never talk back again please I will never I swear I will never. _

Screaming.

Mine.

My voice

I am.

Finally it all stills on one memory. _Her. _I know it is her. _Mother? _ A tiny and fragile creature holding a baby in her arms. It is not crying. It is sleeping against her collarbone swaddled in a scratchy stained wool blanket. She is gaunt and her bones are sharp and her skin struggles to stretch over the thick and greedy structure of her body. Clothes dangle off her. Ready to slip off. She huddles deep into her cage, like the one I used to have, and the straw is soiled and old and turning almost brown-orange with filth.

_You're getting old. Too old. Perhaps it is time._

_No, please! I am not too old. I can still…I am able!_

_We have tried. But you are too stubborn, my dear. You do not want to live. I know it as you do not try. I am afraid you will not yield. I am sorry. It is time._

She is begging him. The baby still in her arms. It is crying now its mother's distress pressing down on its velvet head.

_Horace, it is time._

_No please no it is not time I am not done I can still go on please I have a daughter she needs me what will you do with her no, please – NO!_

The woman is dragged away by her hair.

The milk eyed man laughs

She sobs with all her mangled skeleton body shaking

Rivers down her cheeks and chest

All the time

She is dragged off to her death

She cries out for me

Her daughter

Her last.

"_Luciana!"_

Where have I gone?

It is too black here. Where he cannot touch. I cannot feel his probing mind in mine anymore.

Nothing. There is nothing here. And I am here with the void.

* * *

><p><em>Do you know why you are here?<em>

_Yes._

_What are you here for?_

_To make things._

_What kind of things?_

_The kind that breathe._

_And that is what you are, isn't it? A thing? A nothing?_

_Yes, sir._

_It is all you are good for, isn't it?_

_Yes, sir._

_And what will happen if you do not produce a thing?_

_I will die._

_And who will kill you?_

_You will._

* * *

><p>My soul is restless. In pain. It surfaces from the dark pools of me but it cannot scratch the surface with its wispy breath too harsh against its lips. It cries out in vain. <em>Help! Someone help! <em>No one can hear it so deep inside. There is too much wall of flesh to scream through. Only I can. I wish it would stop, _shut up, _no one can help you. You are in vain. You are a _nothing_.

I awake and it is like being born again. Learning to breathe. Learning to let the heart beat on its own. Mouth open and wide and sucking in air as if there is not enough in the world for me to inhale. I tremble. The roots of my skin ache. Wild-eyed. Yes. Wild and caged.

_Shh. I am here, Luciana. I am here._

_Raven, please. Have Remus fetch water and a warm cloth for her head. Hurry!_

_Do I look like the Pony Express to you?_

_This is no time for your dramatics. Please, I would be utterly grateful to you if you will go. __She is having a panic attack. We must keep her calm._

Her voice. Her sweet music voice. Near my ear. Finding me and pulling me close to her. I feel my head leaning closer so I can hear it. _Luciana, I'll be back. Hang on, okay? Hang on tight for me._

Footsteps

leaving

door closing...

It is only us now. She is gone.

Something heavy is on my hand, curling around my palm, _fingers_. I feel them anchoring me here. To this life. I cannot see him, the flooding of soul clouding my eyes and locking me inside tight. A flash of angelic blue on the edge of my sight. He is here. He is holding my hand. Am I safe? Is he here to save me?

_Please. _I force out the words. They are reluctant to leave me. _Please, don't leave me. _

_I will not. I promise you I will stay. Luciana, do you hear me? I will stay with you. Hold my hand. I am here._

He is here. Next to me.s Yes, I can feel him.

He is near.

* * *

><p><em><em>Disclaimer - I don't own Charles Xavier. He belongs to Marvel. I am basing his character off the portrayal seen in <em>X-Men: First Class.<em>__


	5. Dreaming of Demons

_My dear one._

_This, you see, is Hell. And I hope you will forgive me for bringing you into it. You see it is only that I love you. I am too selfish to give you up. To have mercy. I am a coward. I do not want to face Hell alone. You are my one cherished light in a very dark place. But I have one mercy – that I pray you will be free. That you will be gone from this place. And you will find Earth – where it is green and warm and not so cruel as this place. There is still pain on earth, but it is a necessary evil, one that is balanced with good. If I pray hard enough, it will be so. It will, I promise you._

_And I pray, and these are the only gifts I may give you – I pray you will find your Heaven. Your paradise and your painless place. There, numbness will take pain from you._

_I will watch over you when I go. For I will be going away. I do not know when._

_Please, find for me your Heaven. For me._

_For me, my darling._

* * *

><p>I had dozed in nameless places. Where there is no ground. No sky. No water. Only blank faces with no features and underbrush darkness and cold chains. Voices of different colors. Of black and silver and the pure clarity of white. My <em>mother. <em>She had been amongst the black voice of the milk-eyed man and the silver deceiver. The voice of the master. There is no face for me to put upon her yielding whispering voice that cut gently through.

Days must have passed. I was in her company. I sat with her and talked with her and pleaded with her to stay. She crossed her legs and kneaded her hands in her lap. The kneading fit the grain of her talking cadence. She had spoken but said nothing. It was only mindlessly manufactured sound, her speeches, her monologues. I think on them and find nothing. And my pleas drown now. They wash up on sand-less shores. No water to push them and pull their carcass out to sea. Falling down tunnels of empty ears. She is gone but I had seen her. She had spoken but I could not hear her.

I am sorry, mother.

I am sorry I have forgotten you.

* * *

><p>I do not remember waking. Only that consciousness returned. He is there. He is waiting for me. A patient observer. My hand swathed in the flesh folds of his. I try to call out to him. <em>Rock, come to me so I may fall on you. The storm has gone. But I am too weak to make it back to the calm.<em>

Nothing comes out. Gurgling maybe. A hurling thing of strung up half noises. Throat dry. It is always dry. It is a wonder I survive with a desert thriving inside me. My ears ring. Head pounds. Pain and cold and uncertain still of my rock, my protector, my puppeteer. He looks down on me. His brow knits and crinkles in between his eyes. The blue of them hurts. I can feel the rawness brush up against me. _Come to me so I may fall on you._

_Are you sure he is on your side? That his ruse will not fall?_

_Be wary._

_Do not waver._

_Must be strong._

I withdraw my hand, turn away. I am ashamed. Yes, that is what holds together the bricks in the walls. Sticky gray shame. Slithering guilt. Hissing conscience ghosting through veins. _All of you shut up. _How can I think with the clamor in here? Lead me to my haven. Let me be silence. Let me gather all my limbs into myself and let darkness in. Sweet soft darkness.

I am still so tired.

He tells me that he knows everything.

Deepening the stabbing shame to the hilt.

I want to bleed

Tears well up

Now I do not want him to know but it is too late. His mouth wilts. The blue draws back. I do not want it. His pity. Take it back.

Sleep now, he whispers. Sleep and be at peace. I will be here.

Please do not be here. Go from me.

I do not want you to see my shame.

* * *

><p><em>Those who can produce children are kept well. They are queens amongst the rest of us. The boys are kept in cages too small for their legs to stretch out. We roam within our cells like animals. Reduced to beasts. Lash marks stain our backs. Hunger carves a wilderness into our bright and bulging eyes. We are not collector's items. We are refuse. The leftover ones. This is a garbage heap. And the Reaper may do what he wishes with us.<em>

_The Reaper. One who is feared. The deliverer unto death. His eyes are white as fresh milk. The only mutant among the rest of the tormentors. Mostly he only oversees. But when troubles stirs up in the ranks of our cells he is called. Punishment is doled out by the undertakers. _

_I want out. I need out. I can stand this place no longer. My stomach rolls sickeningly with the thought of sleeping another night in here. Hell. This is Hell. My brain is melting. The sweat of my insides leaks from my pores. I am slowly coming apart. Take me out. Let me out! Please, I cannot stay here._

_My legs do involuntary things. My arms follow. I am half wild with madness. It is not so strange. Not here. Madness is second only to death in frequent visitation. They are different colors you see. Death is black. A shadow. A slinking slimy thing. He sticks to the walls. Madness is red. We cannot ignore his presence. Scarlet demon. Exorcist of sanity. Please. I cannot – no more – please! Have mercy! Mercy!_

_I have him_

_Inside of me_

_Now._

"_Shut up!" The whites of the eyes. They bark at me. Dogs. Filth. Rodents in the gloom. "The Reaper's gonna come for you. Shut your mouth. He'll put a hurt on us all if you don't stop!"_

_I have never heard such piercing shrieks in my life. The banshee's roar. She howls deep within. I kick the bars of my cell. My arms twinge. I cannot stop them. They lash out at everything. My legs. Oh god, my legs. If I do not stop they will be broken._

_Let me out_

_Please_

_I will never_

_I swear_

_I will not resent death when he comes_

_The Punishers are restless. Their whips slide over wet ground. Grease of humanity trickling from our bare cages. Pouring sweat. Screaming out. I hate all of you. If I could reach. Oh, if only I could take your bodies for my own. I would tear them out. So the insides would be out and on the floor. Stench of blood. I hate you all. I wish you all dead! Do you hear me? Dead. Burned. Stuck like pigs. You are all pigs! All of you!_

"_This one's gone nuts."_

"_A good beating will fucking shut her up."_

"_Hey! You in there!" Rattling the cage. The animal in me. Her claws against my inside flesh. Pain. Too much of it. Tearing apart. "Shut the fuck up!"_

"_That's it. Take her out."_

_It takes five of them to drag me out of the prison. They drop me as I thrash. The leader. He twists my hair into the knots of his fingers. He drags me by it. Thrashing stops. But I am still screaming. No nails. I am clawing uselessly at his cruel grip._

_They take turns. Laughter. Ice mirth. Cold as the bars of our cages and the frozen water in our bowls in the winter. Red pours out of me. Their boots dig into my stomach my back my legs my arms. But they do not aim for the head. I wish they would. Please, aim for the head. Let me out of here._

_Sometimes we go too crazy to remember hope. And hope is too frail. It breaks. We break. _

_As they shoved me back in I am not yet crusting over. The blood is still thick and flowing fast and the salt of it makes me sick. The ache of bruising. The sting of split open flesh. My eyes are black and purple and I can barely see out of them. _

_Breathing. At first I think it is my own but it is not. I am barely sucking in air enough for myself. My lungs are starving for it. But the ribs are broken. Fluid sacs of breathing sticking out in all directions. _

"_We always win, mutant pig," it says. I try to blink through the swollen flesh. "Don't forget."_

_They all laugh. _

_Let me die._

* * *

><p>I have never tasted revenge. But the phantom taste taunted me in waking.<p>

It is bitter.

For in dreams

It stirs

The first taste is sweet. The stale whispers curl. Flames. My hands are the fire. _Destroyers. _Choking and I revel in the hateful sound of their being and their aliveness and the vigor of their souls. Can you not die? Must you try so hard to live? You are _mine. _

The ground is hard beneath my knees. Glass. A broken picture frame. The blood is stark blinding red. And I realize it is because my vision is scarlet. I am possessed by madness once again. And he is sweetly drawing reason out of me through my ears. Telling me to wring the life out of the punisher beneath me. Straddling him I squeeze harder. And harder. And harder. Until the _voice. _It is not a stale whisper. A tart unholy smell of breath. I cannot smell the dungeon the cage and the fear.

Only the sting of sweet cologne.

And I open my eyes and I feel my hands against the throbbing pulse life and the blue of his eyes are squeezed and wide and failing in their light.

_Luciana please let go! Please! You are hurting me!_

I let go.

He tries to breathe.

Help him

Please help him

I cry out. _Someone help! _Rasping voice. _God _please. Let me speak. I need to help him! You do not understand how could you ever understand you have never been here to save anything from damnation at all!

Watering eyes. Face red and bulging and purple. My hands are torn away from him. I cannot touch him. He gasps and coughs and chokes for air. I am sorry. Please forgive me! I was not myself _please!_

He sputters. Bright flaming shadows of my hands on his neck. _I _had made those. I look at my palms – colored with exertion. I fall back. I am a monster. My nails are talons. My skin is scales. I am the bringer of fear and the keeper of sin. _God _I am so sorry. How will you ever forgive me? It would take a miracle.

Raven is here. He is still on the floor. _Charles? Oh god! Talk to me Charles! Speak to me! _She calls for the butler.

Head turning. Blonde hair tumbling down thin angled back. Her gaze on me. I expect hatred. Coldness. Revulsion.

But it is much worse what I find

Fear

She is afraid.

Of me.

* * *

><p>All my life I have wished for the gentle touch. Of love. Of kindness. Of anything human at all. I have never felt it before. I do not know what sensations it may render if it should graze my tired scar puckered skin. The closest I have come to redemption is through him – the man who has taken me in. I have ruined all hopes of mine. Dashed and broken. Pieces of an inward looking mirror.<p>

On my side, looking out at the melting snow, thoughts racing toward clarity in my head. All of them know. They knock on reason as if it is an unyielding door. _You are a monster. _I close my eyes. Tears come. All I do is cry. But it is only human to cry when you feel pain. And pain is something I am used to feeling. I have grown soft.

My hand is wet with running salt. It feels as if there is an ocean inside of me. Bloated with a sea of sorrow. I am truly sorry for what I have done to him. To the nameless man with the halo of blue. I remember the first time I saw him and believed that angels lived in this world. Now I am certain they do. And he is one. But what am I? A demon?

The floor is burnished wood again. Swept and clean and no trace of my lapse in sanity to be found. The blood from my hands all washed away. The glass picked clean from the ruts in the floorboards. But I can still hear him screaming in my head. I press my hands to my ears. Scream over them. I try but I cannot. They are louder than any sound I could ever make – in my head or with my mouth.

That is _it. _I cannot take this anymore.

I kick my legs over the edge of the bed. They drop to the floor. A smack of feet against it. I feel myself walking with purpose but I do not know where I am going. I do not feel the need to relieve myself. Nor the stabbing hunger (I had not eaten I had been too full with shame). Sleep cannot find me swathed in self-loathing. What is it then? Where am I going? Where are my feet taking me?

They will not tell me. Secretive toes. Covert wrinkled flesh. I am to only follow. That is their wish of me. I have no choice. A daze covers me. Like mist. Or snow. It does not melt with the creeping spring in the corners of the world. I see but all seems dark in league with sameness. I hear, but it is drowned out by the slapping of my feet against the ground. Where am I going? I am told not to ask such questions.

My hand reaches out. Feels something cold but I do not know what it is. I cannot see it. Familiar murk. Bleary-eyed black. I seem to sit down on something supple and squashed.

And when I look up it is him.

The blue.

The angel.

And the black and blue mark of my hands is on his neck.

* * *

><p>Dawn peels away the night. Birds begin to sing outside the frosted window. Chirping. Stirring of wings beating the air. The scratch of tree limbs swaying underneath their weight. I listen to the sound of nature stretching out from underneath the curtained night.<p>

No exhaustion weakens me. I sit as still and erect as stone in my seat beside him. Raven will come to me I know. She will chase me out with her unspoken fear. She will need no words to cast me out. Merely a look and I will wish to disappear.

I only hope he will wake soon. So that I may assure myself of his aliveness. His victory over death.

Sunlight drips into the room. Like gold spilling nectar, warm and honeyed and bright. The warmth touches me and I shudder. Shrink away from it. I do not deserve it. I have turned on the only person that has ever shown me kindness. I am but a wraith of a human being. A black and shriveled shard of soul. I do not deserve to breathe in the sweet free air and feel the graze of sun and look upon the first flowers of spring that unearth themselves from the frozen underbelly of the earth. I belong in a cage. In cold and inky darkness. That is where I belong. Not here beside him. To beg his forgiveness. To ask him to avenge my cruelty.

Such lingering hours. Such wasteful minutes. Still he does not stir. Eyes still. Mouth unmoving. The angel sleeps. A demon sits at his side and wrings her black clawed hands.

Please wake

Please master please

Wake

I need to speak to you

I need to ask of you

Forgiveness

Please.

An idea strikes me nearly dumb. I do not think on it. Action draws out my hand. And I touch his. It is warm and I can feel the current of his veins rushing blood through his body underneath. The contact pulls a breath from the depths of him. From here it feels desperate. As if it were his last. I look down. My heart throbs painfully. I cannot retract inside. I must be here. I must hear him speak.

And then, it comes.

My name.

I do not deserve a name.

I want to give it back.

"Luciana."

It is as if a floodgate has been broken somewhere in my head, in my heart, in the fathoms of my belly. I fall to my knees at his bedside. I sob into his sheets. I am sorry. Please forgive me. I never meant to hurt you. I had been dreaming. I was not myself. I beg of you to forgive me.

_Please_

_Master please._

I feel something touch my cheek. I jerk away from it. The touch. It is so soft I nearly do not feel it. But I do. My nerves go taut. My skin bunches up in anticipation. My entire body tightens waiting and it knows what is to come. I shut my eyes. I bite my lip until it bleeds.

"You poor creature," he whispers. "What you must have suffered."

His fingers trace the length of my gaunt cheek. Softly. Lingering on each angle and caressing each nerve. Every lonely place in me burns with the ache to melt into it. To embrace the touch of kindness. But my mind knows better. There is no kindness. Only malice. Only cruelty. There is no such thing as angels.

I shudder beneath his hands. Violent tremblings. I am afraid. I know I have done a bad thing and I am afraid. This is a ruse. I know what is to come.

"There is nothing to forgive," he says. "I know your mind. I feel it now. You are afraid that I will hurt you for what you have done. Do not be afraid. Hush, I will not hurt you."

_Be calm. Don't be afraid. It's all right. Shh, dear Luciana. All is well._

Something shoots throughout my system. Something calming and bringing serenity in its wake.

My cheek falls into his palm.

And my heart

It warms

And his caresses are softer than I could ever imagine them to be.

For a long time, I kneel there at his bedside, wetting his hands with my tears.

Until I fall back into my own head

And I dream

I silently dream.

* * *

><p><em>His name is Charles.<em>

_**His**__ name. It belongs to him. It hides in the creases of his suits. Lights up the laughter in his eyes. It is the lines that curl around his mouth. And he wears his name._

_I think on my name and wonder how I will be able to wear it. So long it has been. Since I was born without a name but instead a number. I have been trying to slip into the frame of a number and felt hollow and alone in a crowd of sameness. Now I must find for myself a way to carry Luciana and I like the way it sings on the tip of your tongue and rolls around and plays in the taste buds of it. Luciana. I wonder if, with such a name, I could be like him. _

_Are we born to fit a name _

_or do we grow into it, _

_make it our own, _

_and fashion a world that it must make itself fit into?_

* * *

><p><em><em><em>Disclaimer - I don't own Charles Xavier. He belongs to Marvel. I am basing his character off the portrayal seen in <em>X-Men: First Class.<em>__  
><em>


	6. And He Is There

(Author's Note: And so marks the beginning of my pathetic little plot...**things **will start to take place. Let's see if Luciana can handle all of them, hmm?)

* * *

><p>Elysium<br>_by calligraphy smile  
><em>

* * *

><p>I have taken to calling him Charles.<p>

No – no perhaps…surely that is _not right_.

It is _his_ wish that I call him so.

Never would I assume to take authority

On something so far

So alien

So beyond my reach.

But this is no old and practiced habit of mine. It is unnatural – _not right_. The name is a soft and pliant taste lingering sweet in the bitter guilty places of my mouth. _Charles. _I almost feel as if I do not deserve to speak it aloud. Where he can hear and she can hear and even _I _can hear my own voice constructing the syllables of it. Always I have called my superiors by _master. _Never _friend_. And certainly never by name.

It is not right. It is unheard of. I am not practiced, nor am I worthy. It is too large a venture and most of the time, when I remember, I _cannot _do it. Not aloud_. _ When I speak it is strange to even glance into the endless blue of his eyes. The blue tunneled vision of angels. They glisten as if with heaven's winking gentle gaze. And I am afraid, still afraid, regardless of _everything. _That he has done out of the simplest hope and mercy. That he promises to do for me.

But he is patient; he is ever mild in every uttered word. Every kindly painted gesture. When I begin to fall back into myself, retreat into the pleasant cool dark of my own head, he entices me back out. Into and underneath and surrounded in the light. Where he belongs and I can be with him.

When I stutter

When my skin flushes and flares up bright

He lifts my chin with calming warm fingertips.

And tells me _all is well and all is right. _

If I should slip – _master _– he merely smiles down at where I lie dismantled at his feet and picks me gently up. Pieces me back together.

_Luciana, I am not him. _

_I want you to forget everything he ever told you, taught you and did to you._

_I am simply Charles - to you and to everyone. No one more than that._

_You are not inferior to me._

_You are my equal in every way._

He is unhurried in his taken measures. He does not worry for the passing of time. Above everything, he is there, and he is willing. And it has taken so very long for me to learn.

The knowledge has found me – _a savior at last!_

* * *

><p>It is very late. Moonlight has gone. Disappeared behind old and withered tufts of cloud. I do not remember sleeping, but waking does not return to me either in the hours passed in the absence of awareness. I have been in both it seems. In between them. Uncertain of which weighs down on me more. Crushed between unconsciousness and sleeplessness. I am still so very tired. Often I sleep. It does not seem strange that I should not recall something so second nature. So commonplace. It slips through the grip of my brain. Sand through gaps in the fingers.<p>

Still so tired

So very

_Very _tired.

Everything is blurred and my eyes are weary in their seeing. They wish to close again. Resume the hollowed out rest that escapes me. Where nothing can touch and shatter dreamed up solace. My body grows heavy over the propped up arms. My elbows begin to tingle as they gradually lose sensation. I sink back into the crumpled pillows, elbows unfolding. They return to my sides and I lie prone across the silent mattress.

_Charles._

The room is lit up. When sight returns I realize this and it comes with a rush of clarity. Blink, _once. _Blink, _twice. _All blotted out sight releases me. Rushes out and ushers the clear sharpness of wakefulness back in. By the third blink, I am fully awake, fully aware and everything inside of me is clenched and aching and my skin begins to squeeze out dew drops of sweat.

The lamp at my bedside yields a thin and watery layer of light. The bed and the floor looks soft and heady within the gold glow. The other has not been switched on. It lies in darkness. Dormant. Only this one has been turned on.

"You called my name," he says.

I do not even have to turn and flood my eyes with him.

He is there, underneath the doorway.

The glittering blue of him is wreathed in halo gold.

"Why?"

I turn. Without a word, without a sound, he sits down, eases into the long-backed pale blue armchair that has become enslaved to my bed side. He is still dressed only in pajamas – thin cotton ones for the settling of spring. No robe. It is too warm. New earthy heat seeps in from the grounds outside. Everything turns to green and color and stark brown menagerie shades. It is a pleasant heat that finds us here. No sticky thrum of summer.

He breathes. Inhale. Exhale. I count each unseen push and pull of his lungs. They hide within the folds of his clothes but still I see them. Still I feel the hollow throaty cadence of them. Because I know them and they are my own as much as they are his. These bodily rhythms that play without our knowing, without our recollection of their playing at all.

"You were dreaming," he explains. "I woke to hear you calling for me. I came in here, to make certain you were all right, and decided to stay. You were very frightened."

I draw my knees up. They are draped in white sheets shrouded in gray underbrush shadow. I stare down at the floor without knowing what I am looking at. "I called your name."

He smiles. I can see it shining softly in the corner of my eye. "Yes," he says. "Yes, you did. You called it without hesitation. Perhaps you think of me more as a mother hen than a friend."

"No!" A knee jerk reaction follows. My hand snaps out. It blindly searches for his and clutches what it finds. It is a strangling grip. The old strength revives itself in me.

"That…_no…_" Frustration born of wordlessness bubbles up. It froths in my mouth and makes it hard to speak. "You do not understand… that is not it at all."

But it is only a moment and I remember my place – in muted shame I draw the desperate hand away.

He takes it back, shields mine with his, and the warmth that peels me open and invades my entire cold-shelled body. I could melt into it - that unassuming clasp of his fingers fastening over my ashen knuckles. The reviving envelopment of his calming touch. It is as if his flesh is fashioned out of it. The fabric of perfect serenity rendered almost human. But the eyes – they betray the true form. No, he cannot be human. I have decided this long ago. He is too beautiful. Mercy is the velvet current which pushes through him, makes him alive. It is in his words and in his action too. I could no sooner call him _human _than I could an angel. Humanity is an inferior race to the one Charles belongs to.

"I wish you would not be afraid to confide in me," he says. "It will take time. Remember that we have all the time in the world, Luciana. Do not rush yourself into healing. Take as much of it as you need."

He releases my hand.

Wait, please, _no_

I wish you would not go

I want you here with me

You are the comfort in the storm.

"Come to me whenever you have need of reassurance."

His fingertips brush the ruffles in the sheets.

It takes all of me

The force of my nature

To smother the need – _please, please don't go I need you now I want you to stay don't go…don't leave me here…you must stay._

"I will not turn you away."

* * *

><p>There is not a moment of unconsciousness that passes when I do not dream. And the pleasantries of playful reverie do not come. These are not moving pictures in the head that fill my belly with fluttering little happy wings. I always wake in puddles of my own melting body. Skin puckering white and unsightly pink and parched from exertion. Legs aching from running nowhere, away from hidden predators. Fists clenched and knuckles like the pale smiling of ghosts.<p>

I do not go to him. I cannot. Even as I remember what he has said – _don't be afraid to come to me; I will not turn you away. _There is always that possible exposure of self lurking in the undercurrent doubt. What if he should reveal his true thoughts to me? The celestial blue withering down to colorless human gray?

I could not take it – _I won't _- the sound of his voice paired with the words I know so well. _Go. Get out. Leave this place and never return. _The likeness of reflection that I keep of him – in mercy and in heaven's veiling light - is enough to calm the trembling of stale cold sweat. It numbs the pain. All I must do is close my eyes – _and there_. He is with me in spirit. I do not wish to shatter porcelain illusion that I keep of him. For me. All mine. For the sake of sanity - it is mine. For the sake of selfish longing - it belongs to me.

The day is a shelter. When it comes my heart rises with it and sinks down when it is gone. It shields me from the horrors of the night that I know must come. Mostly I sleep. I try and hoard all of it for when the light is near and the moon too far to stretch out her silver pale hand and touch me. I hardly leave my bed.

I do not hunger

I do not thirst

I do not leave this room unless necessity calls me.

I lie back and wait

And for what I do not know.

* * *

><p>I hear footsteps vaguely. Transparent ones. Too thinly spread out. The white noise suspended over them nearly blots them out entirely.<p>

Another pair falls in behind them. These are in a hurry. They are urgent.

_Raven, what are you doing?_

_You can't just leave her in there._

_I am hardly leaving her anywhere._

_I hate it when you do that. _

_Leave her be. _

_I thought you knew what you were getting into when you took her in._

_I – _a pause. One that is ripe with self-doubt, self-questioning. A moment of reflection on past and present self. _I do not know what you mean._

_This isn't just a hungry vagrant you picked up off the street, Charles. She's been _severely_ abused. If you leave her to her own devices, she will die in there. When was the last time she had anything to eat? Got some fresh air? Had a bath?_

_Are you implying that I am not taking proper care of my pet?_

_Fine. Be a smart ass. Because it's exactly what I'm implying._

_I wish you would not treat me as if I am a child. I know what I am doing. I want to help her._

_Then act like it, Charles. Do whatever you want with her. Help her – just do _something_ before it's too late._

* * *

><p><em>Counting down. Ten to one. One to ten. Over and over and over until the pain stops screaming through my burned up veins and my shredding brain and everything is starting to go black in the corners of my eyes.<em>

_Until it stops_

_And I can breathe_

_But the pain is still there._

"_I want you to show me your ability again."_

_I want to cry. I already am. The sobs are painful and they make my bones bend and crack. Too much. I cannot take it all. I will die if they do not stop._

_And all I can think of is how much I want to_

_How much I want to tell them to keep going_

_Until I stop panting here, on the ground, where I belong, altogether_

_And there will be no more pain just the numbing fingering darkness that will take me down into the depths of its belly and dismantle body from soul and I will be free just let me be free just _please_ I want to be dead please I have never asked for anything in my life and this is all I want. Will you give me this one thing? Allow me one mercy? Just _one?

_I have not answered._

_The searing hot smoldering of flesh falling burnt and melting and charred and peeled so slowly off until the raw and red layer shines blistering through oh god please let me…please I have never…I do not know how to do it! I never did. It was accident that led me to it. I do not know the way back please! Please will you not believe me?_

"_I don't know how!"_

_There is no reply. No sound to remind me he is here. I feel his eyes on me though. On my hair turned to string by watered down salt of the body. I am trembling. My back is in agony. Layer upon layer of burns turning just barely old and the new cover them in scarlet bleeding stripes. I can feel it. The blood. It grazes down my back. Pouring fingertips tracing downward. They memorize the grotesque peaks of spine. _

_Tears mingle with the sweat._

_I cannot help but cry_

_It hurts_

_God_

_It hurts._

_Look at me, girl._

_I do not recognize the voice invading my secret space for thought and it is too late before I realize it is Him the overlord the superior one that is speaking aloud and I did not hear him._

"_Horace, if you would be _so _kind."_

_The milk-eyed man. He scrapes the sky with his head. Too tall. Too thick. He is walking rotting meat with ducts of cream for eyes. A mutant. A traitor to his kind. Carrying out the will of humanity who hates us. _

_What I would not give _

_To have a moment and a knife._

_And I would dig those eyes from their sockets and stomp them into the ground while I dance around the rumble of his screams._

_I want him to know what pain feels like. True pain. All of it. From the core to the tips of his skin._

_I feel my head being torn back by the roots of my hair. My scalp twists in the seizing iron of his hold. I feel as if I am on fire. Everything crackling with the anguish of burning. _

"_A little higher if you will - yes, ah there. Perfection."_

_I will the bones in my neck to snap_

_Please snap_

_Let me out_

_Carry out the mercy that he does not have enough heart to carry out for himself._

_The inhuman fingers. They curl around the hungry point of my chin. Forced to look up. Into the cold eyes which hold in them no redeeming shade of humanity. They are two empty colored sockets. Ice blue. I feel cold just looking into them but it does nothing to soothe the aching burn crawling up my trembling back._

"_Show me your ability."_

"_I can't – please I can't I don't know-"_

"_Hmm. I'm afraid that's not good enough," he says, throwing down my chin into the yielding filth of the ground and the blood and the collecting sweat. "You know what to do. Until she breaks."_

_The scorching hot iron comes down_

_A force not hard enough to break me in two_

_And I hear the bubbling of damaged wilting skin_

_But I wish it would_

_I want to shatter and become too small for them see and never again could they reassemble the glittering black pieces left behind._

_Oh god how I wish it would._

_Just do it. Let me go._

_I wish…_

* * *

><p>It is not the first time I wake to the scalding of white hot tears. Now it hearkens too closely to the nightmare I have just left and I sob harder. The pillow is not enough. Its method of soothing too lifeless and weightless and cold. I want Charles. I want him near. But I am afraid to ask it of him. I am afraid he will withdraw and I will lose him forever.<p>

I could not bear that

_Charles._

Not now. I would surely break. I could not – could I ever? – no, there would be no survival in losing him too.

Arms enclose around my shivering form. Warmth is a rushing torrent and it covers me and hides me from the plaguing dark. The cool distance of the pillow's comfort dissipates and is replaced by hands that wipe the tears and the sticking hairs from my blotched burning cheeks. I come apart in them. A bloodless rupturing of the human form. There should be blood. God, there should be no end to the blood. My limbs should be fractured and fraying and splitting off from the rest of me. My brain turning to gray and coursing streams with no more remembering and no more thinking and no more of anything but the end of it all. And I should not be crying into the arm made of mirages and desperate measures. But I do. I wish it were Charles. _Charles. _God _how _I want him here with me for even just a fleeting half of a second. All I need is a moment. The warm blue of him. His voice and his words fusing together in gentleness and martyrdom.

_You cannot._

_Don't._

_Don't do it._

_Be strong._

I moan open-mouthed into my pillow and my teeth scrape the fabric. _Charles. _His name surges from my thoughtless tongue before I can reign it in and keep it safe from the outside air. I have lost myself completely.

There is no me

I am a flood

Thrashing scarred hopeless flood.

The imagined hands have knuckles. My imagination has run rampant. I can feel them brushing up against the gaunt concave bones of my face. They grow sopping wet with dripping salt and sticky dried up tears.

"You needn't call for me," _he _says. I nearly stop my sobbing. "I am here, Luciana. I am here."

At the sound of his voice, _so real, so life-like, authentic in almost every way, _I turn and burrow deep into the hard flat plane of marble white chest. A button has come loose and I am soaking the warm exposed flesh. "I am sorry," I whisper into the skin. Plead with it to relay my message for me. To him. Only for him. "I am so sorry. Please forgive me. Oh god have _mercy_. I don't know what I would do if you did not forgive me. Please. _Please."_

"Hush, hush," he murmurs into my hair. His throat moves against my forehead. "You are hysterical. You need to calm down. It was only a dream, Luciana. It is not real. It is all in your head. Hush now. I am here. Hush."

He tries to touch my cheek again

Sweep the harsh jutting points of them with his fingertips

But in my remembering I forget

That he is the compassion

And _they _are the cruelty.

In my forgetting the old fear winds back up and makes me cringe away from him for just a moment as if he will strike me down.

_You poor creature._

* * *

><p>At last I am empty of weeping. I can soak him in my tears no more. I hold onto him for as long as I can. I do not know how long I can make this last, this place of sanctuary, this new haven, where I find that being held by him is the safest burrow in this world. He smells of cologne and fresh linen and runny desolation. It is a strange pairing of fragrance. I would have no other kind for him if it were my decision to make.<p>

His fingers stop. They have been brushing through the crusting rime that has hardened in my hair. It has become soft again from the movements. For what seems like hours, he has threaded them over and over through the strands. Slowly they have grown slower in repetition. Their ministration becomes weary as he follows suit. So gradual is their winding down that I do not notice until it stops altogether. I think he must have fallen back asleep.

I cannot stop the alarmed spring of thought shooting up in my head

_Charles?_

The repetitive soothing motions resume.

_I have not left you._

If only I had words. I would ask him to go if he wished to. I would release him from my clawing grip on the wrinkled front of his shirt. I would lift my cheek from his pale gleaming chest and wipe the sticky remnants of tears from it as best I could. If I could. If only. I am not that strong. I want to keep him here. The revelation of finding that he is here and he is warm and he is gentle is one that I will not so easily let go.

I do not want him to leave.

I want him to stay.

Forever.

But I know I can only keep him as long as I can.

His lips move against my forehead. "There now. You're calm."

He sounds so painfully tired. Stubbornness becomes more faint upon realizing how very drained of all energy he must be. It would be a kindness to let him return to his own bed. Let the leech latch onto her detached and lifeless pillow for comfort instead.

I cannot bring myself to do it yet

Just a moment more

_Please._

Born of old habit and shame, I cannot stop the whisper that tumbles out of my mouth. It is in such a hurry to be heard. "I am sorry."

"There is nothing to be sorry for," he replies, the radiant width of his smile somehow translated into his voice. I can hear its sharp sparking mirth from down here, where I cannot see it. "Did I not tell you I was here if you should need me?"

"Yes, but - "

He shakes a little with wearied threadbare laughter. "No, no. You cannot argue with me. You see, I know what I am talking about."

I can hear him swallow against my ear and it brings to my awareness the crashing and receding waves of his breathing and the softly pounding heart riding along with the hollow current sound. Silence amplifies them. They become louder as we climb into our caving quiet. Slow and soft surrender comes as time lapses and the memories of the night wither down to ashes and dust. My eyes grow heavy. The lids above them cannot hold them open for much longer. I am so tired. Always tired.

_Thank you._

His voice echoes in my head for the last time before I must disappear.

Back to the place where sense is dulled and the dozing mind is alive and well.

_I am always here, Luciana._

* * *

><p>The sunlit ceiling is the first thing I see.<p>

Not a neck the color of porcelain.

And I do not hear the crash and fall of breath and heartbeat anymore.

He has gone.

I do not mind as much as I first thought, but still the ache of loneliness sets itself deep into a place where I cannot reach. My fingers clench the sheets, trying to counteract the hurt. It does not go away.

_Charles…_

"I am here."

The voice is loud against the booming quiet of the room. My head snaps over, never leaving the pillow. Warm blue eyes the color of what heaven must be. Yes, they are the portrait likeness of man-made angels. I sink back further into the bed.

"How are you feeling?" He asks of me. "Better?"

I try to compose a word, a reply, but nothing comes of it besides a throaty croak. It is all but dry. Charles must have known this would happen. He has come equipped with a glass of water and a small plate of food.

"I have been neglecting you and for this I beg your forgiveness," he says. "It is only that I have been called away often. Pressing matters were, and still are, at hand. If I am not here, Raven will look after you. Don't you worry. I will not abandon you again. I will make certain you are cared for if I must leave. It was cruel of me, I know. I can only attempt to redeem myself in your eyes. I suppose only time will tell if the error of my ways have been forgotten."

His hand rests absently on the coverlet. It does not know it is there I think by the small twitch of reminder that snaps through it. I reach out, touch the pale blinding flesh. It jumps a little. I look up into his calm and warm and gentle eyes and see gratitude in them. Sincerity underlines the sentiment like an afterthought, an involuntary brush of the heart against reason.

"You must be thirsty. I don't think I've seen you out of this room since you first came here. Mind you, this will change. I will have you out of this place if I must drag you out by your toes," he says, turning to the glass on the nightstand, and my stomach rumbles at the sight of food. He does not hear it. The astonishing color of his gaze falls on me again and I almost feel that tugging reflex to retreat back inside beginning to bloom. It stops, half alive, half dead and is forgotten. "Here you are, darling."

_Darling._

_I am sorry for the world that I have brought you into._

_I will never know if you will ever forgive me._

_But know I loved you from the first time I saw you._

_I hope that is enough._

"Luciana!"

I snap back into awareness. The glass slips from my hand. Down it goes, falling, fast descent, until it shatters on the hard pitted wood below.

"Good _god,_" he breathes, excitement coiling under every word. "So that is your ability!"

My eyes had been squeezed tightly shut. I almost did not realize I could not see until I heard him speak. And when I open them, the light staggering for a moment, trying to readjust to the colored world – I almost cannot believe what I am seeing.

The glass had fallen.

It lies in pieces on the floor.

But the water is suspended midair

Churning, turning,

Jerking with the movements which match mine.

_I _am controlling it.


End file.
